As mushrooms pop up across the Macedon Ranges, residents are being cautioned about eating wild fungi.
The Victorian Department of Health and Human Services has issued a warning about consuming wild fungi, saying this autumn’s warm weather has created ideal conditions for poisonous varieties.
Chief health officer Charles Guest said the two most dangerous varieties – the death cap and the yellow staining mushroom – were often gathered by foragers after being mistaken for field mushrooms.
Professor Guest said the death cap was a large mushroom.
Its cap ranges in colour from light olive green to greenish yellow.
He said the yellow staining mushroom turned yellow when the caps or stems were bruised by a thumbnail.
Mushroom expert and Great Australian Mushroom Company general manager Jim Fuller, who regularly forages in the Macedon Ranges, has advised residents to never assume a mushroom they find is edible.
Mr Fuller said it took years of experience to have confidence that a mushroom was safe to eat.
He said any mushrooms found in native Australian bushland would be inedible, with the safe varieties of mushrooms found under trees originally from the northern hemisphere, such as pine trees.
Mr Fuller advised residents to get advice about whether mushrooms they have found are edible from online forums such as the Facebook group Australian Wild Mushroom Hunters.
